Critic's Pick: Breakfield

Like the Texas alt-country band Mike and the Moonpies, which changed its name to Silverada in 2023, Nashville quintet Boy Named Banjo sought to expand their commercial reach by taking a new moniker. Now called Breakfield, the band released their first album under the new name in June. Silverada always struck me as a group that pushed the paradigm, and their 2020 release Touch of You: The Lost Songs of Gary Stewart paid tribute to a honky-tonk artist who probably would’ve looked askance at the idea of alt-country itself. Meanwhile, the sound Breakfield achieved on their 2023 album for the Mercury Records Nashville label, Dusk, was one step away from mainstream country. The album’s “Heart Attack” was Celtic-flavored country, and if you wanted to compare that incarnation of the band to, say, Old Crow Medicine Show and the Eagles, I wouldn’t argue. On their eponymous debut as Breakfield, which they cut for Rounder Records with producer Sadler Vaden, they sound like a New Wave-influenced alt-country band. The strategy works, and you might compare them to the now-forgotten alt-country-rock band The Vulgar Boatmen — maybe Breakfield could cover their 1989 tune “Drive Somewhere,” which would work in an alt-country context.

8 p.m at The Basement

1604 Eighth Ave. S.